Technical Who makes a good quality wire crimper?

My mom, and the guy I got my 56 Olds from, both worked at T & B in Elizabeth, NJ. Good company to work for, back in the day.

 

These have worked well for me for 30+ years

 

Now who can recommend a good terminal selection to buy?

 

Lots to choose from google is your friend

 

You need to be careful about those inexpensive terminal kits. Many of them use much thinner gauge metal for their construction and aren't as robust as the US made ones and can be prone to breaking due to vibration. With the pre-installed shrink, you don't get as good a crimp. You'll also end up with sizes you'll never use.

 

As a first term apprentice way back in 1974 one of the first things they taught us was to look at the crimp connector before crimping to see where the seam is. An easy task on fork or ring connectors, but for insulated you have to look at the ends to see the split. For non insulated the split always goes opposite the indenter. But for insulated crimps it can go either way, but not 90 degrees away. If it's not perpendicular to one side of the tool it will not make a good crimp.

 

Back in about 2010, I built an experimental helicopter and felt justified in springing for the Amp 59250 and Amp 59275 at about $100 each and have never tried any of the other crimpers here. The biggest drawback is the PIDG connectors cost from 25 to 50 cents each but I have never had the crimp fail when tested to the MIL spec. I believe it is 35 lbs direct pull.

 

That’s way better pic than mine! And that is the exact one I have! The only thing I can add to Moriarity’s post is to add heat shrink before you crimp!




Bones

 

I'm a funny guy I guess. I use non insulated connectors, and solder it as well. Don't forget to
put a piece of shrink tubing on first to complete the job.

 

I have done that exact same thing, with success for over forty years with out a failure. But you need to know “ how” to solder and use good solder! I always used and still use Radio Shack solder.
But I think recently, things have changed. I have looked at MIL soldering specs on the net and a lot of them are now deleted!
Crazy Steve had a very good thread on crimping , here, a while back. And a lot of other electrical advise! Good read!




Bones

 

Or these!





Bones

 

That is a hotly debated topic. I was taught to do it the same way as you, the seam side gets the indent. My teachers claimed this is the way they were taught in the US Navy.

 

And another vote for Thomas and Betts. After 20 years of making crappy moosh-flat crimps I listened to Crazy Sreve and imported a pair of T&B from the US. They make beautiful crimps.

Thanks again Steve - your advice appreciated.

Cheers,
Harv

 

There are few things that upset me more than seeing those crudely crimped flat crimps on insulated connections, on an otherwise kick ass build!




Bones

 

Just go to Del City's web sight and order the types of terminals you figure you will need and when they show up store 'em in box from Menards. Order up some lengths of shrink tube from Del while you are there.

 

At work, we could sample out almost anything from AMP. Which became Tyco then TE Connectivity.

So, I'd do my homework and sample out what I needed on my car. Then never blinked an eye at anything I put in for a sample of.

 

AMP ratchet is top , I have 2 pairs of T&B insulated and non-insulated , I recently purchased a new pair of ratchet crimpers , Cresent brand . They work good , but not near the quality of AMP . I normally if possible crimp and solder the joints I can get to , finish with heat shrink tube .

 

Here is an array of crimpers I had in a drawer.










Except for the Astro brand in the first picture and the chincy ones with the blue grips in the last picture, they were all used to make crimps on high dollar equipment. Most have some type of mechanism that doesn't let you release until its gone thru the full range of the crimping motion. Its kind of like torquing any nut or bolt, we don't all apply the same pressure every time, so for the more critical bolts we use a torque wrench. I don't think we all squeeze the wire crimpers the same either, so having a release mechanism seems to me to be a good feature.

 

ekimneirbo, there is one of the most important issues with any type of crimp made on stranded wire, over crimping or under crimping. I have seen gremlins in wire harnesses caused by the crimp breaking most of the strands of wire and just leaving 2 or 3 strands hooked up. Shrink the tubing over the crimp and the wire will ohm out fine but will not carry a load. When I was at Chrysler we had a transmission harness supplied by an outside vendor that was causing all sorts of havoc from over crimped wires with broken strands. It took several weeks to determine what the issue was and that was with dozens of people looking for the issue. Soldering the wire with too much heat can cause issues as well, the solder can wick inside the insulation and cause the wire to be brittle to the point where a few flexes will cause the wire to break.

 

I thought TYCO made model electric trains

 

Properly inserting the terminal is the key here . Most people try inserting it 180* from @Moriarity advice and that can cause problems down the road.

 

These are my crimpers and a sample crimp. With the wire stripped correctly, the barrel crimps to the insulation for strain relief with one part of the anvil and the conductor is captured with a different shape. The insulation on the PIDG terminals is generally nylon so it takes the crimp without splitting the way the PVC style does.

 

Maybe I just suck but I never had any luck with crimping tools. I just use lineman pliers, squeeze them suckers real hard and never have issues.

 

At home I use a Panduit set, that is a probable copy of the T&B ones shown. They even used two colors for the insulated handles. At work, I have a drawer full and they start at about $650 and go to over $1000. Depends on what you are crimping.

 

I just went back and kind of reviewed this thread and felt compelled to mention, after looking at some of the pictures of crimps, it is very important to select a terminal the exact size for your wire! With out the exact size terminal for your wire…you WILL NOT get a 100% crimp!
Not will it work ? Yes can you double crimp and fold flaps over each other? Yes , but you won’t get a “ good” crimp!
We work on old cars…mostly at our leasure ! Take the time to wait and get the correct terminal! It’s important!
Myself…..I have never used the wrong size terminal on a wire




Bones

 

As a Stationary Engineer , I crimped on many lugs 0000 and larger . Hydraulic crimpers . If in the field , no lug for the size wire I had I would use strands of copper from scrap wire pile to make up the difference before the crimp , and solder . This is not the answer , Mr . Bones is correct , use the correct best quality you can 1st time and be done , have fun on something else .

 

I've bought a lot of terminals from this company-
https://www.ferrulesdirect.com/
They have just about everything you'll ever need to wire a car, including oddball stuff like bullet connectors, fully insulated quick disconnects, flag terminals, etc. Quality stuff.

 

Burndy tools... wow. This takes me back a few. Around 1989 at work, I was thrust into the world of connectors and cables. They forced out the previous guy who was doing the connector assembly instructions and made me King Shit of Turd Mountain.

I had inherited a master connector and contact assembly instruction book that was started in 1973. It was a treasure-trove of all sorts of obscure information. Most was photocopies of hand written notes. I expanded on it as time went by.

Soon after we compiled a formal Connector Assembly Instruction book on a PC based program, which was cumbersome as heck. Later we went with Power Point, much better.

I had compiled a cross-reference between the old Burndy tools to the new Daniels crimp tools. We still had a lot of old work instructions in circulation which were updated as we came across them. My binder was full of Excel and Word documents I added.

I also had a set of the Encyclopedia of Connectors. This was circa 1985 at the time and covered a lot of ground for commercial and military items. They listed the tooling under the M22520 mil-numbering system which I had to translate into the Daniels and other tool manufacturers ID numbers.

https://www.edwardspublishing.com/

 

I use Vicegrips set just right they work well and take less messing around than the crimping tools.

 

Very few people understand or have ever heard of metal migration.
This is the principal of a wire end crimp.
Heat of compression is the engineering term involved and that is simply, enough pressure is applied so that the two parts are actually fusion welded together. Sort of like making diamonds from coal only on a smaller scale.
Full closure ratcheting crimpers achieve this every time.
Using ordinary plier type crimpers require hand strength like Hulk Hogan to achieve a proper crimp.